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For over thirty years, discursive psychology has offered a robust challenge to cognitivist approaches to psychology, demonstrating the relevance of discursive practices for understanding psychological topics and social interaction. Matters of embodiment – the visceral, sensory, physical aspects of psychology – have, however, so far received much less attention. This book is the first text to address the theoretical and analytical challenges raised by bodies in interaction for discursive psychology. The book brings together international experts, each of which tackles a different topic area and interactional setting to examine embodiment as a social object. The authors consider the issue of subject-object relations and how ‘inner’ psychological subject-side states are constructed and enacted in relation to object-side states through embodied discursive practices. How do bodily processes become particular kinds of embodiment through and within social interaction? How are bodies psychologised as social objects? Moving beyond dualisms of the subject/object that construct an ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ psychological state, the book pushes forward contemporary theory and analysis within discursive psychology. Discursive Psychology and Embodiment is therefore an essential resource for researchers across the social sciences working within discourse, social interaction, and the ‘turn to the body’.

Innovative research requires courageous methods. With this in mind, Courageous Methods in Cultural Psychology invites students and post-graduate researchers to develop methods that will let them grasp phenomena of interest more fully. Readers will learn how to use established methods, and may be asked to develop them further by combining single steps of extant procedures, or by taking a completely new approach to data collection and analysis. In this book, diverse researchers present projects in which they have tried to do just that. A comprehensive process — from narrowing down research questions to collecting and analyzing data — is given in detail, followed by critical reflections on how well the authors have understood and shared complex realities. Project presentations are framed by theoretical chapters that deal with the challenges and opportunities of cultural psychology and interdisciplinary research. Courageous Methods in Cultural Psychology is sure to inspire and encourage those who wish to venture on new roads “into the wild.”

Creativity — A New Vocabulary proposes a novel approach to the way in which we talk and think about creativity. It covers a variety of topics not commonly associated with creativity that offer us valuable insights and open up new and exciting possibilities for creative action. This second edition includes six new essays which continue to challenge the traditional vocabulary of creativity and its preference for individuals, brains, cognition, personality, divergent thinking, insight, and problem solving. The book proposes a more dynamic and relational perspective that considers creativity as an embodied, social, material, and cultural process. This book will be useful for a wide range of specialists within the humanities and social sciences, as well as practitioners from applied fields who are looking for novel ways, of thinking about and doing creative work.

While 'identity' is a key concept in psychology and the social sciences, researchers have used and understood this concept in diverse and often contradictory ways. The Cambridge Handbook of Identity presents the lively, multidisciplinary field of identity research as working around three central themes: (i) difference and sameness between people; (ii) people's agency in the world; and (iii) how identities can change or remain stable over time. The chapters in this collection explore approaches behind these themes, followed by a close look at their methodological implications, while examples from a number of applied domains demonstrate how identity research follows concrete analytical procedures. Featuring an international team of contributors who enrich psychological research with historical, cultural, and political perspectives, the handbook also explores contemporary issues of identity politics, diversity, intersectionality, and inclusion. It is an essential resource for all scholars and students working on identity theory and research.

This handbook is the first of its kind to explore Positioning Theory. Taking inspiration from the groundwork set by Rom Harré and collaborators such as Bronwyn Davies, Fathali Moghaddam, Luk Van Langenhove, and others the book explores the emergence, historical context, and disciplinary applications of Positioning Theory and its basic precepts as a social psychological theory. This volume encompasses over 20 chapters across four sections, assimilating cross-disciplinary insights that try to understand the theoretical underpinnings, methodological applications, and contemporary relevance of Positioning Theory. Part 1 explores the movement of scholarly figures and their numerous works on the subject. It discusses the foundational origins and the historical contexts of the existing theories on positioning and new directions for scholarship. Part 2 examines the methodological and narrative investigations used for data analysis in positioning research, navigating through the epistemological orientations and theoretical landscapes of Positioning Theory. Part 3 explores numerous applications across disciplines to consider the reach and influence of positioning within and across multiple disciplines. Lastly, the authors contemplate the future directions for Positioning Theory. Featuring researchers from leading research institutions from across the globe, the book is important reading for scholars interested in positioning and Positioning Theory. We recommend this handbook for graduate-level courses in social psychology, communication, discourse studies and related disciplines.

This volume aims at further articulating and developing the cultural psychological interest in community. It focuses on the processes through which individuals constitute communities and the processes that restrain or enable moving forward with others. This interest is necessary especially now that the world is on the move. Economic crises, political crises and ecological crises have led to reinforced migration patterns, a rise in authoritarianism and xenophobia, and have become a threat to the survival of the world as we know it, particularly to minorities and indigenous communities. At the same time, we are witnessing the birth of new networks, dialogues and actions, generated by people within, between and among communities. Therefore, this volume collects interdisciplinary theoretical, empirical and applied contributions enabling engagement with communities in cultural psychology. This involves both reflections on meaning-making processes and projections on how they feed into social transformation, in exchange with community psychology, anthropology and sociology. People vitally depend on community to effectively negotiate or resist in complex intercultural or intergroup settings. In the wake of human rights violations or to prevent further damage to the environment a community is needed to undertake action. From feminist movements and disability activism to the otherwise marginalized: how do people constitute communities? How do they resist as a community? How can cultural psychology contribute not only to understand meaning-making processes, but also connect them to processes of social transformation? Migration, moving through and connecting to different communities can affect meaning making in significant ways. People consider themselves as members of one or another community, but they also increasingly enter into new settings of social practice with new means for action. How might creative meaning-making build bridges between communities? How might new community arise in between or with others? How can cultural psychology deal with intercultural processes without reifying different cultures? These are the central questions that the, mostly emerging, scholars from many corners of the world address in this book. Their research addresses different institutional settings that are resisted and transformed from within, in dialogue with others. From social work, NGOs and municipal activity to university talent mobility and art projects for youth. Other settings are newly inhabited, from the public square and the social media to a foreign city and neighborhood church. Thus, more communities appear on the map of cultural psychology.